With Girl’s Day’s Sojin announcing her departure from her agency, yet another one of my favorite groups has bitten the metaphorical dust. Nothing lasts forever, indeed.
This is another one of those cases where fans saw the writing on the wall far before any official rumblings of trouble started. Girl’s Day’s last album released in 2017, and given the radio silence and veiled hints from the members since then, it’s a wonder that we hadn’t heard anything concrete until now.
Nothing Lasts Forever was our first clue that Girl’s Day might be something special. They debuted in 2010 with the universally-panned Tilt My Head, and to the credit of their agency, DreamTea Entertainment, immediately executed a 180-degree pivot. After a casual member shuffle, Girl’s Day released this girl-power themed banger merely three months after their disastrous debut. Now that’s a quick turnaround.
Unfortunately, after Nothing Lasts Forever, Girl’s Day would lapse into a series of cutesy, mostly uninspired songs that failed to capture the general public. (Never mind that I personally adore Don’t Forget Me and K-Pop would be better with more songs like it, please.)
This nadir lasted somewhere until 2013 or 2014, when they executed yet another hard pivot from their long-suffering cute concept to an unapologetically sexy one (see: my ramblings on the K-Pop cute-sexy spectrum). This met with more success, although Girl’s Day would still never quite ascend to the A-list ranks.
Girl’s Day is the textbook case of a group earning their bacon through sheer perseverance and hard work. Coming from a D-list agency, they were afforded none of the luxuries and runways that their contemporaries like A Pink and f(x) were given. Many of their active years were spent on the brink of disbandment, and the next comeback was never a certainty. Still, though, Girl’s Day trucked on—until, it seems, they couldn’t anymore.
Finally, no discussion of Girl’s Day would be complete without this viral clip of Hyeri’s puppy-dog outburst: